


Preserve Me From My Past

by thegeekgene



Series: Wash It Out [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bulges and Nooks, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 18:53:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4149048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegeekgene/pseuds/thegeekgene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat comes to Tavros after a difficult night. In the morning, they learn what they have in common.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Preserve Me From My Past

Tavros is asleep in his room when it happens. It’s late night on Friday or very early morning Saturday; he’s not sure which but he is sure, when he wakes, that there’s someone at the door. The arhythmic pounding is a tipoff.

He gets ungracefully to his feet and staggers over, not really awake, not really thinking of who it is so much as stopping the noise before it wakes the whole hall. He rumbles for the knob in near-darkness and is confused when it doesn’t open. Then he realizes, _lock_ , and manages to get it disengaged. As he swings open the door, briefly blinded by the hall light, he realizes the pounding has stopped.

But there is someone there.

Karkat is staring at him, wild-eyed, wearing a tank top and -- a skirt? It definitely looks like a skirt, long and red, and Tavros considers that he might be having a weird sex dream.

“Shut up,” Karkat says, before he can ask. “Shut up and move.”

He then takes Tavros by the upper arms and pushes him back, kicking the door shut behind them, and keeps pushing until Tavros’s knees hit the bed and he has to sit down. And then Karkat -- sits in his lap? What?

“Is this a sex dream?” he asks, even as he folds him up in his arms.

Karkat laughs. It sounds jagged and unsteady and not funny at all.

“Fuck, I wish,” he says. “That would be so much better.”

“So, uh, it’s not?” Tavros is waking up more fully, now, becoming aware that Karkat is shaking, and he holds him tighter. “Then why are you, in a skirt?”

“Is that how your sex dreams usually go?”

“No. That’s why I’m, uh, confused?”

Karkat’s hands move from his arms, around his shoulders, and cling, his face burrowing into Tavros’s neck.

“Kanaya let me borrow them,” he says. “Her pants wouldn’t fit me and I couldn’t walk across campus in my underwear.”

“Kanaya?” Tavros asks, focusing on the small questions rather than confront the biggest.

“My RA,” he says. “Soon to be former-RA. She’s cool.” He sniffs and Tavros realizes he’s crying. He rubs his back, cradles his nape in one hand, and doesn’t think for a second about letting go.

“I had a fight with Gamzee,” Karkat says, finally. “It was bad. He tried to -- he wanted to _pile_ for fuck’s sake, after months of jackshit he was all like, you’re looking stressed, let’s jam. Of course I told him no.”

Tavros realizes, in the silence that follows the outburst, he’s started rumbling. Humans call it a purr but it’s not, exactly; it doesn’t signal contentment but deep pity, the desire to comfort. Karkat holds on tighter.

“I won’t -- I can’t go into it all, not again,” he says. “I talked it all out with Kanaya. It’s just -- it got bad and I -- couldn’t stay there. Some assfuck was threatening to call campus safety when Kanaya stepped in. I’ve been with her for fucking hours but she needed to go to bed and I needed someplace to go, to.” He sniffs again, harder. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Tavros says. “Of course it’s okay.”

“I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

“It’s okay,” he says again. “I’m glad. I’m glad you came here.”

Karkat attempts another laugh, to even worse affect.

“You’re glad,” he says. “You’re glad to have some shitbrained wiggler bawling on your doorstep at ass in the morning.”

“I’m glad you felt safe to come here,” Tavros says, “because you are safe, and because, I pity you, kind of a lot.”

Karkat huffs.

“For that logic alone, I pity you, too.”

They sit quietly for a little while, Tavros’s sympathetic rumble the only sound save occasional sniffles and huffs from Karkat. Situation aside, it’s nice to hold him like this, to cradle him and be held in return. His body is warm, slowly untensing against him, and when he heaves a sigh and lifts his head Tavros is perversely disappointed.

Karkat doesn’t say anything, though, just sits there, staring at him through the dark inches between them. Tavros can see his swollen eyes, his lightly torn lips, the tear tracks on his cheeks. He can’t make out the color and is kind of glad; this isn’t how he wants to find out.

He drops his hands to Karkat’s hips, steadying but not gripping, so he can get up if he wants to. But he doesn’t get up; he just sits there, quiet.

And then he kisses him.

It’s not like their other kisses, not hard or demanding; it’s deep, needy, not gentle, exactly, but tender.

Tavros kisses back, slow, welcoming, and lifts one hand to cradle Karkat’s face. Karkat turns his head into it, changes the angle of the kiss and one of his hands settles at the base of Tavros’s horn, curling around it. A tingle of sensation goes through him and he sighs.

Karkat pulls back enough to murmur, “Like that?”

“Mm,” Tavros says. “Hornbeds. Not the horns themselves so much.”

Karkat kisses his lips briefly. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, then ducks down to kiss under his jaw.

Tavros tips his head back to give him better access, sighing, then moans when Karkat makes it to the faded bruises on the side of his neck and sucks. He’s mildly embarrassed to discover his bulge reacting, rising warmth in his nook.

“Mm,” he says. “Uh. Karkat?” Karkat grunts at him, dismissive, and bites down. “Ah-Ah! Karkat!” It comes out as a squeak.

“Hm,” Karkat says, licking the spot. “What?”

“I think that, uh, you should maybe -- ” Karkat is still licking him, slowly, and it’s making words hard to come by. “ -- Maybe stop?”

“Why?” Karkat sounds annoyed and something else, too. Tavros squeezes his hips tight.

“B-because,” he says. “That feels -- really good.”

Karkat nips his earlobe. Tavros has always had sensitive ears.

“That’s the idea, dumbass.” He makes the insult sound like an endearment and Tavros melts a little more.

“I mean -- my -- I’m going to -- ”

Karkat reaches between them and presses his hand to the front of Tavros’s pajama pants.

“That’s. The. Idea.”

Tavros shudders.

“Oh,” he says. “Okay.”

Karkat kneads him gently and Tavros’s nook feels uncomfortably wet.

“Am I free to continue?” Karkat asks. He sounds amused.

“Oh, sure,” Tavros says, “I mean, if that’s your -- your end goal.”

“That is very much my end goal,” he says. “Now. Get naked.”

Karkat is suddenly off him, which Tavros doesn’t like, but he’s tugging off his borrowed tank top, which he does like. Tavros stares openly as the shape of his body, heretofore only felt through layers of clothing, becomes evident through the darkness.

“I hope you weren’t too invested in the skirt thing,” Karkat says, tossing the shirt onto the desk chair. “Kanaya will actually kill me I get bodily fluids on it.” He skins out of the skirt and his underclothes and stand there, naked in the darkness, naked in Tavros’s room, and the lines of his body are perfect -- broad and solid, rippling with subtle musculature, and when Tavros reaches out to touch his hands are slapped away.

“Why the fuck are you still dressed?” Karkat asks and Tavros has no idea.

He remedies the problem as quickly as he can, shucking his pajama pants into an untidy heap on the floor and tearing at the snaps that hold together his left sleeve so he can get his shirt off without snagging it on his horns. Inevitably, he ends up snagging them, but Karkat is done laughing at him by the time he’s naked and this time when Tavros reaches out, Karkat comes to him.

He sits in his lap, again, straddling his thighs, and Tavros runs his hands up them, feels smooth muscle, a hint of softness as his hips, and his heart flips in his chest. He leans in for a kiss, lands at the corner of his mouth and carefully corrects so it can be as lush and full as the feeling welling inside him. Karkat nips at his lips but lets him in. Tavros slides his hands up his sides, over his grub scars, and around his back to hold him tight, press their bodies as close as their mouths.

Karkat’s arms slide around his shoulders, holding on, as he rolls his hips, grinding the bone covering of his bulge against Tavros’s belly. Tavros can feel a hint of wetness against his thighs and a thrill goes through him, tiny shocks to his bulge and nook. He kisses harder, kneads Karkat’s back wherever his hands fall, and when he feels his bulge shift, trying to emerge, he lets it go.

“Oh,” Karkat says, drawing back as it makes contact with his ass. “Eager, much?”

“You woke me up,” Tavros mutters into his jaw.

“So you’re a giant slut when you wake up, noted. Morning sex will be a thing.”

“Mm, yes please.”

Tavros puts his hands on Karkat’s waist and drags gentle clawtips along his grub scars. Karkat shivers and presses tighter against him.

“Like that?” Tavros says, repeating the motion.

“Ugh. Harder,” Karkat says. “I won’t break.”

Tavros scratches harder, over the scars and down their sides, pinches the base with careful clawtips and Karkat moans.

“Yes,” he says. “Like that, good.”

Karkat brings one hand around and leans back, arching his spine to keep their lower bodies pressed tight together, and wraps his fingers around the base of Tavros’s horn. He rubs, slowly, scratches, sending bolts of sensation through his body. Tavros’s bulge lashes between his thighs and presses up, searching for a place to bury itself.

“Oh, fuck,” Karkat says, as Tavros loses track of himself, digs his claws hard into his grub scars, and his bulge emerges, slick and questing between their bellies.

Tavros drops a hand to touch it and it weaves in with his fingers. It’s the same length as his own, he thinks, but not as thick. Few are.

“H-how do you want to do this?” he asks.

“Told you already,” Karkat says, and gasps as his claws rake again along the tender flesh on his sides. “I’m going to ride your bulge. Now lie back and enjoy it.” He grabs Tavros by the horns and shoves him down.

Tavros bounces and the bed creaks and he’s left with his head and shoulders handing off the other side but as he struggles instinctively to right himself Karkat is sitting up and shifting around and, oh god, taking him in. They moan as one as Tavros’s bulge penetrates his nook and Tavros had known Karkat ran hot but he hadn’t considered what that would mean for his nook. He’s more than warm, blistering compared to Tavros’s lower body temperature, and so tight and wet around him.

“Oh, god,” he says. “Oh, god.”

“Fuck, yes,” says Karkat and his bulge sinks deeper, quests further, anxious for me even as Tavros’s brain is fried by what it’s already found.

Karkat, not content to wait for Tavros’s bulge to do the work, pushes down further on him, forces him deeper until he’s sheathed, quivering all the way inside that awesome heat.

“Oh, fuck,” Tavros manages.

“Hell yes,” says Karkat. “That’s it, that -- that’s exactly what I needed.”

And then he starts to move.

He does lift himself, like humans do in that position; it’s more subtle than that. He shifts his hips, grinding down and relaxing, clenching his nook over and over until the hot vice is all Tavros can feel, all he can think of. His own nook is wet, dripping down his thighs, and he can feel cool air drifting against it, emphasizing his emptiness, but it seems unimportant, tangential to the real point, which is Karkat, Karkat and his beautiful, glorious body above him; Karkat riding him in jerks and squirms; Karkat, so hot and tight, so wet around him; and the noises he makes, gasps and grunts like rain from his lips, liquid squelching whenever he moves. It should be desperately unsexy, those wet noises, but they remind Tavros with every shift that Karkat wants him, is wet for him, is here now because he’s found something in Tavros to desire.

Tavros is moaning, low and needy, trying not to be too loud, but it’s difficult when all he wants to do is scream. He settles for moaning, for pressing up, only to be pushes down, again, for reaching up and touching. He runs reverent fingers over Karkat’s chest and abs, down to the V of his hipbones, grips his hips and feels them flex as another clench inside sends another wave of pleasure through him. He goes back to the grub scars, wanting to pull his own weight and when his claws catch the tender skin Karkat hisses and squirms harder.

They last a while, Tavros’s bulge squirming and shivering inside Karkat, Tavros’s claws gently mauling his grub scars, and when Tavros comes he goes silent and shakes with it, pent up need releasing and rendering him voiceless. He drops his hand to Karkat’s bulge, works it as Karkat curses and grinds, and he comes with a loud, singular moan that probably wakes the neighbors. Tavros finds he doesn’t really care.

Tavros fishes a bucket from under the bed and supports Karkat as he releases their mingled genetic material into it, then grabs a towel from the hook by the door to clean himself up. When he looks back, Karkat is silhouetted by the light from outside and he has to go closer to see his face. They sit on the edge of the bed and kiss.

“Was that okay?” Karkat asks.

“Amazing,” Tavros says and Karkat snorts.

“Not the sex, I know you enjoyed that, I just finished voiding your enjoyment through my nook. I mean doing it now.”

“I think that I should be, uh, asking you that,” Tavros says. “You’re the one who just had an emotionally-charged evening.”

“And you’re the pity-struck moron who would probably have torn his own legs off to make me feel better,” Karkat answers. It’s dark enough he can’t see Tavros wince. “I don’t want you to fuck me because you feel obligated.”

“I don’t feel obligated,” Tavros says. “I feel, well, uh, I think ‘honored’ is the word, but something tells me you won’t like that one, so, uh, ‘happy’ will work.”

Karkat leans into his shoulder and laughs. It’s rough and uneven and a really nice sound.

“You know me so well,” he says. And then, “Mind if I crash here until my new room assignment comes through?”

“Of course,” Tavros says. “I mean, no, I don’t mind, and of course you’re welcome to. Provided you, uh, pay me with your body.”

“You mean my nook.”

“I’d like to get better acquainted with your, uh, bulge, too, if that’s okay.”

“I guess that can be arranged.” Karkat stifles a yawn against the back of his hand. “Bed, now?” he asks.

“Bed is definitely a thing we should do now.”

They lay down in Tavros’s narrow single bad, Tavros on his back -- necessary to accommodate his horns -- Karkat pressed into his side, head on his shoulder. Tavros’s arms fit into the arms and dips of his body like they’re meant to be there and he falls asleep thinking nothing could possibly be better than this.

 

On a scale of things that are great, waking with Karkat in his arms ranks up there with falling asleep with Karkat in his arms. Tavros heartily approves of both and hopes to continue to experience them in the future. He’s sticky and sore and too hot and Karkat has wiggled mostly on top of him, face burrowing into his neck, leaving his horns to prod Tavros’s jawbone, but all those little discomforts pale in comparison to how right it feels, lying still in the early morning light, with someone he cares about pressed against him.

He kind of needs to go to the bathroom, too, but he can deal with that later.

Tavros stays still and quiet, cradling Karkat’s sleeping form, admiring how well they fit together, until the inevitable Saturday morning maintanence crew starts up their lawn mowers and Karkat grunts in irritation. Tavros grins and buries a hand in his hair, gently scritching his scalp.

“Uh, good morning,” he says.

“It would be,” Karkat grumbles, voice thick and muffled in his neck, “if you would shut off that godforsaken racket.”

“Sorry, I can’t,” Tavros says. “It’s outside.”

“Fuck. It’s Saturday. Who the fuck decided mowing day was Saturday on a college fucking campus?”

“That would be Dean Snowman, I think.”

“Fuck her, then.”

“I’d rather fuck you.”

Karkat shifts and lifts his head, glares and Tavros with heavy eyes and a darker gray line in one cheek, where is lay pillow against his clavicle all night.

“You’re joking, right?” he says. “You are freakishly well-endowed. I feel like my nook tore itself out and went hiking in the Himalayas over night.”

“Oh,” Tavros says. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it was amazing. But I’m sorry to inform you that my nook is closed for business and will not be reopening until it’s good and ready for more action. Trust me when I say this pronouncement is worse for me than it is for you. I haven’t been to the pail since we were freshmen.”

“There are other ways to have sex,” Tavros points out.

“Not that getting up close and personal with your nook doesn’t sound amazing, but you’re operating under the erroneous supposition I am capable of getting off without internal stimulation. Surprise, I’m fucking not. Sorry to shatter your dreams, Nitram, but there will be no morning sex today.”

“Oh.” Tavros looks at Karkat, who glares back as if daring him to comment on what he likely considers a personal failing. “We can still cuddle, right?”

Karkat glares for another second or two, then snorts and puts his head back on Tavros’s chest.

“We can cuddle,” he agrees and Tavros hugs him once again.

They lay quietly for a little while, Tavros idly considering work-arounds for the pail issue, if his bulge continues to cause problems (he’d clip his claws if he had to, but maybe they could get some kind of toy to try first) while Karkat thinks of who knows what, lashes brushing Tavros’s chest when he blinks, and the mowers drift further away outside. It’s Karkat who breaks the silence.

“What do you have to do today?” he asks.

“Hm. Not much? I usually go over to Sollux and Aradia’s on Saturday evening.” He pauses. “Do you want to come along?”

“Don’t let me interfere with your pile time,” Karkat says.

“You won’t be. We usually play video games and Aradia cooks and I bake something. I was thinking chocolate cake, this week.”

“I didn’t know you baked.”

“Uh-huh. It used to be something I did when I was anxious or stressed out, but now I just do it for fun. I make really good chocolate cake,” he adds.

“Fine,” Karkat says. “I’ll come hang out with you guys tonight. But if that cake is not the best thing that’s ever touched my tongue, you’re going to pay.”

“With my, uh, body?”

“Damned straight.”

Karkat sits up and stretches, giving Tavros a really nice view of his back, smooth and firm, which he admires openly. He lifts one hand and trails it down the minor valley of his spine. When Karkat looks back at him, he smiles.

“What are you doing?” Karkat asks.

“Just, uh, appreciating you?”

“You can appreciate me by getting me some clothes to wear,” Karkat says. “Will anything of yours fit me?”

“What’s wrong with Kanaya’s?” Tavros might not have a specific fondness for skirts over other forms of dress but the tank top shows off enough skin for him to appreciate.

“I prefer pants,” Karkat says and stands up.

The view of his bare ass is distracting and Tavros is distracted as he replies, “I doubt we’re, uh, the same size, but, uh, you can check?”

“Which drawer?” Karkat asks and turns around.

Tavros is distracted again, not by how gorgeous his body is -- though it is, tones but not over-muscled, sturdy, with the smallest holdout of fat low on his belly -- but by the color of the traces of genetic material on his thighs. It’s not Tavros’s brown, so it must be Karkat’s, but it’s not the dark rust he was expecting. It’s red, bright red, red like the time his high school girlfriend took him hiking and she skinned her knee. It’s not a troll color at all, but human, and Karkat’s definitely not human, which can only mean --

“Sufferer,” Tavros says. “You’re the Sufferer.”

There’s a silence. When Tavros is able to tear his eyes from that cherry red material and fix them on Karkat’s face he sees shock and -- is that fear?

“I mean, uh, his descendent,” Tavros says. “Obviously, seeing as the Sufferer is, uh, dead, and also would be very old, if he weren’t so, uh -- Karkat? Are you okay?”

“How the _fuck_ do you know about the Sufferer?” Karkat near-shrieks. “How the fuck do you know about his _blood_? He’s taught as a rustblood in the histories, I know he is, so how the _fuck_ \-- ” He sputters off into formless profanity, getting more and more panicked and Tavros realizes there’s only one thing he can do.

“Karkat,” he says. “ _Karkat_. Look at me. Look at my back. Karkat, _look_.”

Karkat stops sputtering and looks. Or, Tavros hopes he’s looking and not silently fleeing. He can’t say, since he’s got his back to him, now.

“What the fuck happened to your shoulders?” Karkat asks, fear forgotten.

“They cut my wings out,” Tavros says. “After I pupated, I had wings.”

“How the fuck did you get -- oh my god.” Karkat’s hands are suddenly on his shoulders, squeezing hard. “The Summoner. You’re the fucking Summoner.”

“His descendent,” Tavros says. “I’m not the Summoner, any more than you’re the Sufferer.”

“How did you get off Alternia alive?” Karkat asks.

“They cut off my wings,” Tavros says, again. “The, uh, intention, I think, was to hide me on Alternia. But there was, uh, an accident. During the surgery. My spine was injured. I couldn’t walk for, uh, a couple years. So I got refugee status as a potential cull.”

He’s only told this story once, before, to Sollux and Aradia, one stormy night when the power was out and they’d had too much to drink. Doing it now, doing it sober and in broad daylight, with his scars exposed, feels so much worse.

“How did you get off Alternia?” he asks, in turn.

There’s a silence. After a moment, the bed dips and Karkat’s palms slide down to lay flat against his shoulderblades.

“They were waiting for me,” he says, “in the brooding cavern. As soon as I hatched, a jadeblood took me. They had a deal with some Earth government to get me here.”

“Does Dolorosa know?” Tavros asks. “Or, wait, that’s dumb. That’s why she’s here, isn’t it?”

Dolorosa, the once-slave lusus to the Signless Sufferer, had been one of the most sought-after troll rights activists in the world until her abrupt decision to retire from public life and take up teaching. No one had ever known why.

“She entered academia to look after you.”

“We’ve never talked about it,” Karkat says. “She’s never mentioned it. She treats me like every other student. But the way she looks at me.” He stops. The bed dips further and he’s up against Tavros’s back, arms around his waist.

“I’m an English major,” he says. “You’re a biology major.” Tavros clings to his hands. “They’re expecting us to come back and save the world.”

“I know,” Tavros says. And then, impulsively, because he’s never talked about this part, not even with Aradia and Sollux, “I don’t want to.”

Karkat nods against him, cheek pressed to his nape. “Yeah,” he says. “I get that. But. I think I kinda _do_.”


End file.
